All About Christopher Nolan’s Brother, “Fallout” Director Jonathan Nolan

Christopher Nolan inspired his sibling's love of movies

Christopher Nolan’s career may have looked different today without his brother, Jonathan Nolan.

Since the early 2000s, the siblings, who go by Chris and Jonah, have written and directed several critically acclaimed TV series and films, tackling projects together like Memento (2000), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Interstellar (2014).

Similarly, both married within the industry and regularly collaborate with their partners: Chris and Oscar-nominated producer Emma Thomas have worked side-by-side on every feature he has directed. Meanwhile, Jonah wed writer Lisa Joy, and after cocreating Westworld, they teamed up for Fallout, on which he was a director and she served as an executive producer.

Before all that, though, Chris and Jonah were born to parents Christina and Brendan Nolan, who raised them in 1970s London alongside their older brother Matthew. As children, Chris became obsessed with movie-making, and Jonah was so moved by his passion that he ultimately decided to carve his own path in the industry as a writer. Decades later, the two are still closely involved in each other’s work.

“There never has been anything that either of us have worked on that we haven’t shown each other and talked about,” Jonah told Forbesabout the relationship with his brother. “I think getting a gut check from him is an essential part of any project that I’m working on.”

From their upbringing to successful collaborations and constant support for each other, here's everything to know about Christopher Nolan's bond with his brother, fellow director and screenwriter Jonathan Nolan.

Chris and Jonah share a childhood but not an accent

Despite both being born in the U.K., growing up in the same household and being raised by an American mother and British father, Chris has a British accent and Jonah has an American one.

As the Oppenheimer director told Robert Downey Jr. during a Wired interview, their differing accents happened because of where they went to school.

Chris attended Haileybury boarding school outside of London before studying English literature studies at University College London. While there, he joined the school’s Film and TV Society and later served as the president of the organization.

As for Jonah, his formative years were spent in both London and Chicago. The Falloutdirector attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois, and later enrolled at Georgetown, where he majored in English and worked on the student newspaper The Hoya.

Chris’ love of film impacted Jonah’s career path

Growing up, Chris became intrigued with his father’s Super 8 camera and used it to practice shooting his own stop-motion films, according to the British Film Institute. As a ‘70s kid, he was enamored by Star Wars and developed a love for the science-fiction genre.

“One of my earliest movie memories is my dad taking me to see 2001 in [London’s] Leicester Square on the big screen,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was such an extraordinary feeling: to be taken off this planet and to the furthest reaches of the universe.”

His love of film was apparent to his younger brother Jonah, who considers Chris one of his biggest influences. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jonah revealed that the two became particularly close in their late teenage years over their shared sense of humor and interests, including their love of the James Bond franchise and movies led by filmmaker Ridley Scott.

“Thank God he had good taste,” he joked, referring to Chris. “As with any little brother, right? You start out sort of drafting off of their taste, then try to define your own, sometime in opposition to theirs, or in our case kind of reaching out like little cultural magpies."

Though Chris inspired Jonah, his passion for film almost made the Person of Interest creator hesitant to pursue the same path.

“Film was always his thing. I realized fairly early on, and I fought it as long as I could," Jonah recalled. "The thing that had always bailed me out of everything ... was writing."

Jonah wound up taking screenwriting classes around the same time Chris began working on his first full-length feature, Following (1998). While employed as a grip on the set of Chris’ film, Jonah realized it was something he wanted to explore — and this led to Chris and Jonah’s first major collaboration that would land in theaters just two years later.

Chris and Jonah’s film partnership began in a car

Their successful streak of film collaborations — in which Chris directs and Jonathan writes — began while Chris was wrapping up production on the crime thriller Following.

Jonah told Filmmakermagazinethat during one of his general psychology courses, he felt inspired to write about identity and memory and decided to work on a short story. After presenting it to his brother, it would eventually serve as the basis of the Memento script.

“I hadn’t completely finished writing the story when I first told Chris about it, which was while we were driving across country, from Chicago to L.A.,” Jonah explained. “The story kind of became the film during that drive, and I never published it.”

In an interview with IndieWire, Chris recounted the beginning of their collaboration on Memento and explained that it took Jonah "another two years" to finish the final draft of his short story, which aligned with the film wrapping up.

“We had decided that in our own ways we were going to try and tell the story in the first person," Chris said. "Me in film and him in a short story.”

Jonah pushed Chris to do The Dark Knight

Fans of Chris’ Batman movies have Jonah to thank for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

During an appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, the younger Nolan brother — who worked on Batman Begins but was more directly involved in the writing of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises — revealed that after making Batman Begins, Chris wasn’t so sure he wanted to direct another one.

"I think he didn't want to become a superhero movie director,” Jonah said. “He was very proud of Batman Begins. To me, it's like ... we built this amazing sports car and I'm like, 'Let's take it for a drive. Don't you wanna make one more?' ”

According to Jonah, he encouraged Chris to venture from the origin story and experiment by slightly shifting the characters into different genres. The director listened, and The Dark Knight went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards, including a win for the late Heath Ledger in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category.

It also became Warner Bros. Pictures’ second highest-grossing domestic release of all time, having made $533.3 million in domestic ticket salesand $1.003 billion worldwide by August 2023, according to Box Office Mojo. The title had held the top spot for 15 years until Barbie’s release in July 2023.

The Dark Knight Rises also grossed over $1 billion worldwide.

The most iconic line in Dark Knight was written by Jonah — not Chris

Chris told Deadline he’s still haunted by a memorable line from his 2008 film, which his younger brother wrote: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

“It kills me, because it’s the line that most resonates. And at the time, I didn’t even understand it," he explained. "Then, over the years since that film’s come out, it just seems truer and truer. In this story, it’s absolutely that. Build them up, tear them down. It’s the way we treat people.”

Jonah told The Hollywood Reporter that he and Chris had done a few versions of the script and were looking for something to illustrate the tragic plight of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and have it still apply to Batman (Christian Bale).

“The idea is there are people who put themselves on the line and so often that wager turns on them. It’s also that old idea of absolute power corrupting,” Jonah explained. “The fact that it resonates with people beyond the film is gratifying. I was proud of that line.”

Chris and Jonah don’t like chairs

Eyebrows raised when in 2020, Anne Hathaway — who starred in the Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises — told Hugh Jackman during a chat for Varietythat Chris “doesn’t allow chairs” on set.

This prompted the Interstellar director’s rep to release a statement obtained by IndieWire, which clarified that the only things “banned” from Chris’ sets were cellphones and cigarettes and that he did not like the cluster of director chairs around the video monitor that were “allocated on the basis of hierarchy not physical need.”

The incident lightheartedly reemerged during the 2024 awards season when Cillian Murphy joked about the no-chairs debacle while accepting his best actor at the Golden Globes for his titular role in Oppenheimer.

“I knew the first time I walked on a Chris Nolan set that it was different," he said. "I could tell by the level of rigor, the level of focus, the level of dedication, the complete lack of any seating options for actors, I was in the hands of a visionary director and master.”

Following his brother’s example, Jonah made it clear that he agrees with his sibling's approach when it comes to seating on set.

“Like Chris, I don’t sit down — he got some friction last year for saying he doesn’t have chairs on the set,” Jonah told The Hollywood Reporter. “Everybody who’s working is moving.”

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